R-Series

TrueNAS R-Series

High-density single-controller storage at the best price per TB. Three models, three classes — from hybrid entry to all-flash flagship with 400 GbE.

Density. Efficiency. Scale.

The R-Series is the cost-optimised platform within the TrueNAS Enterprise portfolio. Three models cover the entire range: R20 as a 2U hybrid entry system, R50 as a 4U hybrid mid-range with high HDD density and R60 as a 1U all-flash flagship with 400 GbE and up to 60 GB/s throughput.

All three are single-controller systems without HA failover — and that is the point: maximum petabyte storage at the best price. Customers who need dual-controller HA pick the F-, M- or V-Series. Customers who want predictable maintenance windows and petabyte storage at the best price per TB pick R20, R50 or R60.

Three models: R20, R50 and R60 — no R30/R40 in the current line-up

Single-controller architecture for the best price per TB

R60: first R model with 400 GbE and 60 GB/s throughput

PCIe Gen5 and DDR5 in the R60 (16-32 cores per controller)

Up to 256 drives (R50) and 7 PB raw (R60)

Up to 14 PB effective capacity with ZFS data reduction

Full TrueNAS Enterprise suite including TrueSecure

Expansion shelves: SAS for hybrid, NVMe for the R60

Three models — one family

Pick the R model that matches your workload size. All three run the same TrueNAS Enterprise software.

R20

2U hybrid entry

Compact hybrid system for file servers and smaller backup repositories. The best entry model with the full TrueNAS Enterprise suite.

• 12× 3.5" + 2× 2.5" bays
• 6 – 16 cores, 64 – 192 GB RAM
• 2× 800 GB SATA cache
• 2× 100 GbE + 10GBaseT
• Up to 3.4 PB raw / 7 PB effective

R50

4U hybrid mid-range

High-density hybrid storage with 48 front bays and NVMe cache. Ideal for backup targets, data lakes and S3 scale-out cluster nodes.

• 48× 3.5" + 4× 2.5" NVMe
• 6 – 16 cores, 64 – 192 GB RAM
• 4× 800 GB NVMe cache
• 2× 100 GbE + 10GBaseT
• Up to 6.5 PB raw / 13 PB effective

New — All-Flash Flagship

R60

1U all-flash for AI/HPC

Pure NVMe system with 400 GbE, PCIe Gen5 and DDR5. The first R model to deliver 60 GB/s throughput — for AI/ML, HPC and latency-critical pipelines.

• 12× NVMe (front bays)
• 16 – 32 cores, 192 – 384 GB DDR5
• Pure NVMe (no separate cache tier)
• 2× 400 GbE or 4× 200 GbE
• Up to 7 PB raw / 14 PB effective

Note: the earlier R30 and R40 models are no longer part of the current line-up. They are succeeded by the R20 for smaller workloads and the R50 for higher density.

TrueNAS Configurator

Configure the R-Series yourself

Build your live capacity, RAID layout, networking and expansion in a few clicks — shareable config code, no login, free of charge.

Open the configurator

Drives

RAID

RAID-Z2

Effective

240 TB

TrueNAS R-Series: Capacity & Sizing

How much usable and effective capacity remains after RAID parity and ZFS overhead? Typical R-Series configurations as a guide — the exact figures for your drive layout are calculated live in the configurator.

R20 · Hybrid Entry

12× 18 TB HDD, RAIDZ2 (1× 12-wide)

Raw216 TB

Usable (pool)165 TB

of which recommended ≤ 80 %132 TB

Effective (LZ4 ~1.43:1) ⓘ235 TB

Single-controller hybrid for backup targets and file servers.

Calculate with your own values

R20 · Hybrid + ES60

12× 18 TB Chassis + ES60 (60× 18 TB), RAIDZ2 (6× 12-wide)

Raw1.30 PB

Usable (pool)987 TB

of which recommended ≤ 80 %790 TB

Effective (LZ4 ~1.43:1) ⓘ1.41 PB

Scales to 1.3 PB with the same drive layout.

Calculate with your own values

R50 · High-Density Hybrid

48× 24 TB HDD, RAIDZ2 (4× 12-wide)

Raw1.15 PB

Usable (pool)878 TB

of which recommended ≤ 80 %702 TB

Effective (LZ4 ~1.43:1) ⓘ1.26 PB

Classic fully-populated 4U for petabyte archives.

Calculate with your own values

R50 · Hybrid + ES102

48× 24 TB Chassis + ES102 (96× 24 TB + 6 HS), RAIDZ2 (12× 12-wide)

Raw3.60 PB

Usable (pool)2.63 PB

of which recommended ≤ 80 %2.11 PB

Effective (LZ4 ~1.43:1) ⓘ3.77 PB

Petabyte scale with high-density 102-bay shelves.

Calculate with your own values

R60 · All-Flash NVMe

12× 15,36 TB NVMe, RAIDZ2 (1× 12-wide)

Raw184 TB

Usable (pool)140 TB

of which recommended ≤ 80 %112 TB

Effective (LZ4 ~1.43:1) ⓘ201 TB

PCIe Gen5 NVMe for AI training and 4K video editing.

Calculate with your own values

Guide values (TB = 10¹² bytes). Actual usable capacity depends on vdev layout, RAID level, pool fill and data type. Values include ZFS RAIDZ padding at 128 KiB recordsize / ashift=12 (iX-quote-conform).

Configure your own R-Series

TrueNAS R-Series: Detailed specifications

Per-model comparison — generated directly from the configurator model data (single source of truth).

Specification	R20	R50	R60
Form factor	2U (660 mm Tiefe)	4U (990 mm Tiefe)	1U (840 mm Tiefe)
High availability (HA)	Single controller	Single controller	Single controller
Storage modes	Hybrid	Hybrid	All-flash
CPU (cores / threads)	6–16 Cores wählbar / 12 Threads	6–16 Cores wählbar / 12 Threads	16–32 Cores wählbar / 32 Threads
RAM (max.)	64–192 GB	64–192 GB	192–384 GB
Drive bays	12× 3.5" (front) + 2× 2.5" (rear) [Cache-only]	48× 3.5" (front) + 4× NVMe-U.2 (rear) [Cache-only]	12× NVMe-U.2 (front)
Read cache	2× 800 GB SATA SSD (Read+Write Cache)	4× 800 GB NVMe SSD (Read+Write Cache)	—
Write cache	2× 800 GB SATA SSD (Read+Write Cache)	4× 800 GB NVMe SSD (Read+Write Cache)	—
Max capacity (raw)	3.4 PB	6.5 PB	7.0 PB
Max capacity (effective, iX 2×)	7.0 PB	13 PB	14 PB
Max. drives	132	256	60
Max throughput	8 GB/s	10 GB/s	60 GB/s
Fibre Channel	2× 32Gb	2× 32Gb	—
Network (max.)	2× 10/25/40/100 GbE · 2× 10GBase-T / SR · 6× 10GBase-T / SR (alternativ)	2× 10/25/40/100 GbE · 2× 10GBase-T / SR · 4× 10GBase-T / SR (alternativ)	2× 400 GbE · 4× 25/100/200 GbE
Management	1× IPMI Out-of-Band Management	1× IPMI Out-of-Band Management	2× 1GBase-T (Management)
Expansion shelves	2× ES24 \| 2× ES60 (max 2 gesamt)	2× ES24 \| 2× ES60 \| 2× ES102 (max 2 gesamt)	2× ES24N \| 4× ES60 \| 4× ES102 (max 4 gesamt)
Power (typ.)	300 W	700 W	600 W
Heat output (HA)	1,430 BTU/h	3,240 BTU/h	2,900 BTU/h
Input voltage	100–240 V auto	100–240 V auto	100–240 V auto
Redundant PSU	Yes	Yes	Yes

Max effective capacity follows the iX marketing convention (2× raw), matching the official iX datasheets. Concrete configuration examples above use the conservative LZ4 ~1.43 factor.

Architecture and expansion

Single-controller designs with high drive density — and the R60 as an all-flash flagship with 400 GbE.

Single controller — best TB per dollar

Deliberately without HA failover. Saves the second controller and delivers significantly more petabytes per investment dollar.

Dense HDD storage

R50 with 48 front bays and up to 256 drives via expansion shelves — up to 6.5 PB raw in 12U.

All-NVMe R60 with 400 GbE

The first R model with a 400 GbE network fabric, end-to-end PCIe Gen5 and DDR5 — up to 60 GB/s throughput for AI/HPC.

Scales to 14 PB effective

With ZFS data reduction the R50 and R60 reach 13 and 14 PB effective capacity respectively — without additional licence fees.

Available storage media

R20 and R50 use classic SAS HDDs with SSD or NVMe cache. The R60 is a pure NVMe system with Gen5 paths from drive to 400 GbE NIC. All media are hot-swappable and support S.M.A.R.T. monitoring as well as optional SED and FIPS 140 encryption.

Enterprise nearline HDDs (R20, R50)

• 7200 RPM SAS3
• 8 TB to 26 TB capacity
• Optional SED and FIPS 140

SSD and NVMe cache (R20, R50)

• R20: 2× 800 GB SATA SSD (read & write cache)
• R50: 4× 800 GB NVMe SSD (read & write cache)

All-NVMe R60

• 12× Gen5 NVMe SSDs (3.8 TB to 122.8 TB)
• Expansion via up to 2× ES24N (NVMe shelf)
• Optional SED and FIPS 140
• End-to-end PCIe Gen5 and DDR5

Power, climate, dimensions

Redundant hot-swap power supplies in all three models, remote power on/off via IPMI and UPS signal integration are standard. Detailed weight figures are not consistently published in the current data sheet.

Height R20 / R50 / R60

2U / 4U / 1U

Chassis depth (max.)

660 / 990 / 840 mm

Cores R60 (Gen5)

16 – 32

DRAM R60 (DDR5)

192 – 384 GB

Throughput R60

up to 60 GB/s

Networking R60

2× 400 GbE

Weight

not in public sources

Input voltage

200 – 240 V, 50/60 Hz

Operating temp.

0 °C – 35 °C

Certification

CE, FCC Class A, UL, RoHS

Protocols and integration

Full TrueNAS Enterprise suite — file, block and object on a single system. Single-controller means no HA failover, but the full feature set.

File protocols

• SMB v1/2/3
• NFSv3, NFSv4 with RDMA
• FTP, WebShare

Block protocols

• iSCSI, RDMA via iSER
• NVMe-oF (TCP/RDMA, R60)
• Fibre Channel (R20, R50)
• OpenStack Cinder

Object & directory services

• S3-compliant + immutable locking
• MinIO Alstor
• Active Directory, FreeIPA
• Kerberos, LDAP, NIS

Hypervisors & apps

• VMware (VAAI, vCenter, VM warn/stun)
• Proxmox plugin (iSCSI + snapshots)
• Hyper-V (VSS, ODX, CSV)
• KVM, XenServer, OpenShift
• Kubernetes CSI

Note: all three R models are single-controller systems — there is no automatic HA failover. For mission-critical workloads with 99.999 % uptime requirements we recommend the F-, M- or V-Series.

What is the R-Series built for?

Workloads that need lots of capacity at the best price per TB — and where a planned maintenance window is acceptable.

File servers for SMB & mid-market

Central SMB and NFS storage for office, engineering and research data — with Active Directory integration and ZFS snapshots against ransomware.

Backup target & Veeam repository

High-capacity hybrid pools (R20, R50) as a central Veeam, HYCU or Commvault repository with immutable snapshots and ZFS replication.

Scale-out S3 cluster (nodes)

Multiple R50 or R60 systems as nodes in a MinIO Alstor or S3-compatible object storage cluster — horizontally scalable into multi-petabyte territory.

Big-data data lake

R50 with 256 drives as a data lake for analytics, machine-learning training data and log archives — with dense HDD storage at low cost.

AI/HPC with R60 (NVMe + 400 GbE)

Pure NVMe platform with Gen5 and a 400 GbE network fabric — for GPU training, inference and latency-critical HPC pipelines with up to 60 GB/s throughput.

Cold/warm storage at scale

Archiving, compliance storage and cold storage at economical petabyte prices — with ZFS compression, deduplication and immutable snapshots.

Security and compliance

TrueSecure is also available on the R-Series — from hardware-accelerated encryption to audited admin roles. Despite the single-controller architecture you get the full TrueNAS Enterprise security model.

FIPS 140 for data-at-rest and data-in-flight

AES-NI hardware encryption

Encrypted drives and datasets

Restricted admin roles (Security, Storage, Monitor)

Auditing of all SMB and admin events

NIST 800-209 and GPOS STIG compliant

Immutable snapshots against ransomware

Signed updates with rollback

Backup and cloud integration

The R-Series integrates seamlessly with existing backup and cloud strategies — as primary storage tier as well as replication target.

Snapshot-based ZFS replication (local & remote)

Truecloud Backup to Storj

Veeam, HYCU, Asigra, CommVault, NetBackup

Rsync and Cloudsync

iX-Storj, Amazon S3, BackBlaze B2

Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure

Asynchronous file replication (Syncthing)

TrueNAS Connect for central management

Your benefits with DATAZONE

As a TrueNAS partner we accompany you through the entire lifecycle of the R-Series — from sizing through commissioning to day-to-day operations. We are vendor-neutral and configure the system strictly to your real requirements.

Configuration consulting: R20 vs. R50 vs. R60

Designing 100 GbE, 400 GbE and Fibre Channel networks

Migration from older TrueNAS models (including R30/R40)

Integration with Proxmox, VMware, Hyper-V and Kubernetes

Capacity planning for backup repositories and S3 clusters

24×365 support with a personal point of contact

Modular shelf expansion during operations

Training for your IT team

Is the R-Series right for you?

The R-Series is the right choice if at least one of the following applies:

→ You have no HA mandate and accept a planned maintenance window
→ Petabyte storage at the best price per TB is your leading criterion
→ The workload is backup, archive or scale-out S3 — not online transaction processing
→ You are planning AI/HPC pipelines and need NVMe + 400 GbE (R60)
→ Single-controller means a planned maintenance window instead of cluster complexity for you

If you need HA, mission-critical uptime or synchronous replication, the F-, M- or V-Series is the better fit — we will tell you so honestly.

Frequently asked questions

What is the TrueNAS R-Series?

The TrueNAS R-Series is the cost-optimised enterprise storage platform from iXsystems. It delivers the best ratio of petabyte capacity to investment cost — as a single-controller system without HA, but with the full TrueNAS Enterprise software suite.

Which R-Series models are currently available?

Three models: R20 as a 2U hybrid entry system, R50 as a 4U hybrid mid-range platform and R60 as a 1U all-flash flagship with 400 GbE. The earlier R30 and R40 models are no longer part of the current line-up — successors are the R20 (for smaller workloads) and R50 (for higher density).

Does the R-Series provide high availability?

No. All three R models are explicitly single-controller systems with no HA failover. Customers who need dual-controller HA should choose the F-, M- or V-Series. The R-Series advantage is a much better price per TB and predictable maintenance windows instead of cluster complexity.

What sets the R60 apart from the R20 and R50?

The R60 is the first R model with 400 GbE networking, end-to-end PCIe Gen5 and DDR5, and pure NVMe storage. With up to 60 GB/s throughput it targets AI/HPC and latency-critical workloads. The R20 and R50 remain hybrid platforms with classic HDD plus SSD-cache architectures.

How much capacity is possible?

R20 scales to 132 drives and 3.4 PB raw, R50 to 256 drives and 6.5 PB raw, R60 to 60 NVMe drives and 7 PB raw. With typical ZFS data reduction this yields effective capacities of 7 PB (R20), 13 PB (R50) and 14 PB (R60).

Which networking options are available?

R20 and R50: 2× 10/25/40/100 GbE plus 2 to 6× 10GBaseT for management and data, optional 2× 32 Gb Fibre Channel. R60: 2× 400 GbE or 4× 25/100/200 GbE plus 2× 1 GbE out-of-band management — no Fibre Channel.

Which workloads suit the R-Series?

File servers for SMB and mid-market customers, backup targets and Veeam repositories, nodes in S3 scale-out clusters, big-data data lakes, cold and warm archives at scale — and with the R60 also AI/HPC pipelines using NVMe and a 400 GbE network fabric.

Which software features are included?

Full TrueNAS Enterprise suite: SMB v1/2/3, NFSv3/v4 with RDMA, iSCSI with iSER, NVMe-oF, S3 with immutable locking, Active Directory, FreeIPA, ZFS replication, Truecloud Backup, VMware/Proxmox/Hyper-V/Kubernetes integration. TrueSecure with FIPS 140 is available for the R-Series.

Evaluate the TrueNAS R-Series

We help you choose the right configuration (R20, R50 or R60), design the network and migrate from existing storage infrastructure — including from older R30 and R40 systems.

Get in touch